Hard Line (album)
Occupation
- Vocal / Guitar: Phil Alvin
- Lead Guitar: Dave Alvin
- Bass: John Bazz
- Drums: Bill Bateman
- Piano: Gene Taylor
Hardline is the fifth album by Californian rock band The Blasters around the brothers Phil and Dave Alvin. Hardline was released in 1985 on the label Slash and is the last studio album of the Blasters.
Music style and history
On their previous publications, the Blasters were stylistically strongly oriented towards the rockabilly, but despite good reviews from the trade press pages they had not managed to be commercially successful with their music. With Hardline they wanted to accomplish with the help of producer Jeff Eyrich a balancing act between traditional rock ' n ' roll and the successful alternative rock at the time.
To a more modern - and thus verkäuflicheren - to achieve sound was Bill Batemans drums further mixed into the foreground than in the past and partly replaced him Stan Lynch of Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers on percussion. Dave Alvin's lead guitar was also more stressed. The biggest concession to the tastes of the masses was the commitment of John Mellencamp, who was relatively successful at this time, as the author of the title Colored Lights. However, the band pretext not entirely on their models: so looked at four titles, the Jordanaires, the long-time backup singers for Elvis Presley. With Samson and Delilah also a gospel was represented. The involvement of David Hidalgo of Los Lobos, some pieces of the band resulted in a significant Tex-Mex twist. On Little Honey played Larry Taylor of Canned Heat the double bass.
Phil Alvin's lyrics are often dark and critical. In Dark Night is about a lynching in a small town, Common Man is an "anti- Reagan song" and Just Another Sunday, which was created in collaboration with John Doe ( John Nommensen Duchac ) of the band X, for example, tells of a failed love.
Title list
Reception and chart success
In February 1985 Hardline reached number 86 on the Billboard 200
The Italian e-zine Viceversa performs the album in its list of the 100 most important rock albums of all time.
By the album's Blasters were also known in Europe to a wider audience and they were invited in a row in the summer of 1985 for the Rockpalast Festival at the Loreley.
Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez used the song Dark Night 1995 for her film From Dusk Till Dawn. Already in 1985 the song was used in the episode of the series Miami Vice Dirty hands.